


something human in your eyes (a life of love and opportunity)

by maikuria



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Eldritch, I hope you all know the podcast because I registered so much I know it by memory basically, Minor Body Horror, Minor Character Death, Multi, Multiple Pov, Or do they?, Second Citadel (Penumbra Podcast), a lot of thematic references, a pretentious amount of metaphors and paragraph breaks, canon quotes galore, guys it's the podcast but with reincarnated saints, how to write: eldritch beings that do not know they are eldritch beings, i think, parentheses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 14:21:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20725625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maikuria/pseuds/maikuria
Summary: Once upon a time, three lowly workmen build a citadel from the ruins of their home.Every knight was slayed. The king, devoured.(“I know this story.”)The human race was on its final breath when the monsters began their assault. The beasts sent three parties to destroy humanity over three days. One by land, one by sea, one by air. And they would have succeeded, if not…Three brothers in a village by the sea.(“You don’t know this version.”)Or: three thousand years after their deaths, the saints come alive once more in almost-human flesh.Why did the Universe bend for them?





	something human in your eyes (a life of love and opportunity)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vampiresuffrage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vampiresuffrage/gifts).

> Surprise!! This is by far my longest work and probably one of the most complete pieces I have ever done!!
> 
> vampiresuffrage, surprise! This was meant as a gift to you all along! Happy one year of friendship!!
> 
> Everyone! I hope you enjoy! I've been teasing this project for a month, I hope it lives up to expectations!

Once upon a time, three lowly workmen build a citadel from the ruins of their home.

Every knight was slayed. The king, devoured. 

_ (“I know this story.”) _

The human race was on its final breath when the monsters began their assault. The beasts sent three parties to destroy humanity over three days. One by land, one by sea, one by air. And they would have succeeded, if not…

Three brothers in a village by the sea. The monsters that planned their assault.

On the first day, the hordes came by land, riding through the mountains of the north. They were met by a mason, the oldest brother. We will call him a man, Saint Aaron, the Resolute. Be not afraid, for he struck the ground again and again _ (they said he had a hammer, is it true?)._ It bent under his will, opened its jaws, and swallowed the enemies whole. The shadows would kill them. He closed his mouth and tasted blood. 

On the second day, they came again, this time by sea. You know who met them there. His name would be revered for centuries, as would be his stillness. His eyes stared at the beasts beneath the waves. Saint Damien, the Tranquil, who did not move an inch. He stared and stared and, with a shout, he called to the sea _ (with a fisherman spear?). _For him, it shredded the beasts. They drowned. His claws dripped with salt water.

On the third day, they came by air. The people ran. No one was there to stop them. 

Then, a child. He did not scream at the shadows above. He faced the sun. He held his ground, determined as he burned for them. Saint Ferdinand, the Brave, that bravest of boys leaped forth. Through his courage, he_ (his pebble, he held his slingshot high) _ became a thunderbolt, struck every dragon from the heavens. His skin would scorch, after. 

The world was clean once more.

_ (“You don’t know this version.”) _

————

Aaron, Damien and Ferdinand live for the First Citadel, and they spill their own kind’s blood to defend it. They live and they fight and they are kept alive in whispers, distorted in great tales of heroism. They love. Their love becomes a weapon and a shield. 

_ (They love they love they love—) _

They die.

_ (The Moonlit Hermit’s will to live is so strong, the Universe bends for it.) _

————

After humanity survives, they rebuild. Centuries pass. The Second Citadel is formed, and in it, are born—

Well, we will call them ‘people’.

————

He grows up between many siblings. He will be the only knight.

He hits rock after rock and memorizes each hardness and texture _(remembers his mother told him to always know his enemies while they picked fruit for his siblings, threw away the spoiled berries), _he kicks and he punches until his knuckles are bleeding red. The carbon snaps and the quartzes break under his fingers. His shoulders widen and his knees harden and all of his fingers are covered in calluses. 

_ (He eats red meat and sometimes, only sometimes, wonders if his teeth can grind it raw.) _

_ (They can.) _

The walls of the mines cave in one day. No one is hurt. The miners feel the vibrations in the depths and, with the hard-earned wisdom of lives lost, evacuate everyone immediately. People are safe.

It changes him forever.

As he stands at the mouth of the mines and watches the debris, he realizes for the first time the power of strength. He can break a few rocks, yes, but can he survive this? The rocks will crush him and grind him to the ground like the quartz that snaps between his fingers. The strength will bury him and the dirt fill his lungs and he will die, he will be enshrined with the smudges of graphite on his fingers.

For the first time in his short _ (long) _ life, he is afraid.

Fear is a funny thing.

He starts training again. He will be as tough as these stones, one day. He will be tougher than them, too. It’s hard, of course it is, he will bleed and rub his skin raw. His fingers will peel and peel and peel and mom, _ mom don’t cry, it doesn’t hurt _…

It really doesn’t hurt him. It never will again.

He grows, much bigger than any of his family does _(fangs and wings and the grounding smell of earth, one day the youngest baby will look at him and cry and cry and cry)__._ His shoulders are much wider than even his father’s and he is twice as tall. He is a beacon in his village, a strong man surely, a bright future of mining. He will be a good husband, and a good father, he will live a quiet, peaceful, rewarding life.

Instead, he becomes a knight.

_ What a good man, _ the villagers say. _ What a great knight he’ll make. _

_ (His mother used to have nightmares while she was pregnant. She would wake up drenched in sweat with flashes of wings and screeches and a violent, terrible shaking. Her face would be bathed in grief and love. The awful, awful remembrance of white fangs and a warhammer swinging, falling. Drums beating, beating, screaming. _

_ She will name the child Angelo. _

_ Do not be afraid.) _

————

Within the Citadel’s walls, find the man who raised the greatest Knight of the Crown. Find him, and ask him this question:

_ Do you remember, the day he drowned, what color were your son’s eyes? _

He will not know how to answer.

Ask again. Watch him quake.

You couldn’t look, could you? His eyes were as wide and deep as the sea… you would have drowned, you would have been devoured by this child and his long long teeth and his black endless eyes, his eyes,_ oh, his eyes, what happened to them when he didn’t drown, _no one would be able to not listen again with his voice on their heads and his eyes could capture you, they could drown you instead.

_ (You named him Damien, why did you name him Damien? Don’t you know you aren’t supposed to invoke creatures by their name?) _

—————

She is young. She is ruthless. Even at her most vulnerable moments, she will never be soft.

The Southern Frosts are cold and merciless, so its children are cold and merciless too. The young ones will grow up without the heat of fire. She will always chase it. Steal, lie, hurt _ (kill)__._ All these rules, she will learn _(she will always thirst for justice in a world that was never meant to be just) _ and follow without hesitation_. _Survive. This child will be called a girl, then a woman. She will learn to put away and destroy any part of her that could be tender, anything she could see as weak.

Her name is Caroline. No matter how many times she reinvents herself, no matter how many times she renounces the _ (child) _person she once was. She will keep the name, and it will be hers, forever.

_(Even when you’re trying to keep things fresh something has to stay the same or you might lose yourself entirely, a witch will one day tell another. She is more truthful than she thinks she is.) _

————

This is the only sliver of warmth the Southern Wilds will allow:

Cinder Clasp.

Every year is different. Every year is beautiful. Every year is new and unknowable. When you close your eyes, you can still see and feel the way you felt. When you open them, you forget. You will never get it back, child, so do not attempt it. All of them are fluid and changing as the flames of Old Cinder. Some are better, some are not. It will be beautiful. It will be ephemeral. You cannot have the new until the old burns away. Can you burn differently, too? 

This is what we call remembrance. This is what we call rebirth.

_ (“Sentimentality and dreaming eyes have no place when the time comes for such… distasteful work.”) _

Caroline will bell Old Cinder for the first time at thirteen. She will bell it every year, even when she has moved away into the North. Even when the edges, just the very edges of her, turn soft.

It lets her.

_ (Beast recognizes beast. Old Cinder will bow his head for her, and she will not notice. He is called Fire King, but when she touches him, she shines and shines and her small fingers become claws, angled wings— _

_ She will never not burn again. He burns out the next morning.) _

————

_ Your name is Damien, _ his father tells him. _ After our lord and saint, who saved our lands from the monsters of the seas. _

Damien wishes he was brave enough to conquer the sea. All of his childhood he’ll wish he was brave enough for something. He will be scared of the sea, and of the depth of his father’s disappointment.

_ (There was once a brave child and he was so, so proud and so scared for the small thing, for the child was brave and full of love—) _

One day he will fall into the water.

And he won’t drown.

_ (Is it the lake or is it the river? Or perhaps the fall at the end of the world? Is there any water at all? Violet eyes will look at him and he will drown in them. He will look at his beloved beyond the Citadel’s walls and his heart will ache.) _

But before that, he will spend his days hunched over Saint Damien’s books. He will pour over the information and commit it to memory _ (the details never stick, it never feels right). _ He will read and read and read and fill himself with sacred words that he can never speak.

When his father questions him, his body clamps down and what comes out is strangled silence rather than his readings. His mouth will close around _ (the stories) _the facts he’d learned and reject his voice as though it were heresy. 

_ (It’s better this way, he convinces himself. Because sometimes he looks at the text and he questions, and that doesn't seem at all appropriate.) _

The tales feel like home, anyway. When he brushes his fingers over the pages, he thinks he might just hear them come to life. Aaron, Damien, Ferdinand, he knows their pictures as well as he knows the color of his father’s eyes. 

_ (He is afraid of the sea, but not due to its depth. No. _

_ The sea is always calling to his heart. It terrifies him.) _

————

Hers is not a happy story. The first tooth she will ever lose does not fall naturally. She loses it by the hand of an angry villager, clutching a piece of warm bread. He will take it back, and leave her bleeding. 

She will still eat, that night. Meat she hides in her ragged clothes from his hateful eyes. He can only take the bread because she allows him to. Instead, she chews every piece of the red, stolen treat and sucks the marrow from the bones. She does not fall ill. There is no time in the Southern Frosts for illness. 

She will lose many teeth that way. She will make others lose them in worse ways, too. Teeth, and many other things.

_ (She misses something else besides the fire. She does not know what it is. The first time she sees fireworks, she cries. She will burn things and watch the flames lick them away.) _

————

Damien is a quiet child. He is, his father will compliment, an obedient small thing. He never disobeys, and he never protests. A look from his father will silence him for days. Yes, he is weak, but at least he is no trouble. He is meek. He is soft. The mere sight of a caterpillar can bring him shivers.

But—

Sometimes, he catches rats. The traps are rather simple, unremarkable. Except… his father never taught him this. His traps will never fail, either. Every rat would be caged, one after another after another. He will wait, long, grueling minutes, until the precise moment in which _ (his prey) _the animals stand under his trap. When he releases the wick, they fall. 

He stares at them for a long, long time. 

_ (Do you remember what it tastes like? Blood? Hear the tolling of the bells.) _

_ (He releases them, in the end. _

_ They run.) _

————

The first time he kills a monster bare handed, Angelo feels like he might puke.

He is a hero. The monster would have killed an entire village’s worth of people if he hadn’t interfered. They would have died without him. _Children._ The monster had been after children.

_ (He has always been protective of his younger siblings. It never sits right with him, to see a child alone, facing danger. It always brings something unpleasant to the edges of his mind, a spoiled fruit he can’t remember biting.) _

And isn’t it his duty as a knight? Isn’t it his duty, to protect others with the strength he has been given _(with the _ life _ he has been given)_ from the monsters that haunt them?

“It grows easier with time,” he’ll tell Talfryn, older _(younger)_ than him and shaking, as if those words could comfort old _(young)_ hands at the sight of a corpse.

_ (For some reason, he does not mourn this imposter.) _

_ It gets easier__,_ he says. One day. _ One day_. Even if it hasn’t gotten any easier for him, he has to believe it will. It has to. One day, this grief has to leave him.

_ (He will take his lack of mourning for the fake sage and the fear beast as a sign.) _

_ (It isn’t.) _

_ ——— _——

Damien falls.

When he doesn’t drown, he believes.

_ (Listen, can you hear it? The sea, it’s calling for its child.) _

—————

The day he doesn’t drown changes things forever.

He throws himself into his studies again, works at meditation. Somehow, this time it is easier. Is this the power of faith? He picks up a blade and a bow and shoots, shoots, shoots, until the skin of his fingers splits open _ (he never notices the blood until it sinks into his gloves), _until his arms give out under him. 

_ (He eats and eats and his hunger is never sated but it is controlled—) _

He grows. His father seems proud of him. He is proud of himself.

There’s wind chimes in the temple. He sits under them for long hours, absorbs texts and legends under their gentle sounds. His mornings here will be marked by the divine sound of the peaceful winds. When he prays, he focuses on their soothing melodies and feels at peace. Below their length, he will feel closer to his saint than anywhere else.

He prays every day. He kneels in the warmth of Saint Damien’s temples and feels his heart beat, beat, beating. The nightmares cannot reach him here. The sea cannot reach him here. He listens to the voices in his head calling, calling and reaches out past them towards_... _

_ Be calm, young Damien. _

Yes.

He starts writing, too, speaking. He empties his lungs with words heard by no one but the temple’s stone walls. He practices, counts holy beats. He recites every legend his father tells him _ (doesn’t notice how they start shifting, when he tells them) _to birds on the windowsills. They stay silent. He keeps going and going for hours and they stay, never sing. 

He speaks for the priests, too. They sit. For the hours and hours of his stumbling poetry, they will listen, eyes wide and glossy. Hours in, the figure they are looking at will stop being a child, will shift into

_ —a being of light and darkness and his words will turn into the shrieking storms at the edge of the world— _

a master of poetry in the making. A cascade of potential before their very eyes, that is. He will charm them, and they will see him tall and great and...

When they blink, it is gone. Damien is just a child once more.

_ (He will tell his Queen, I must speak my heart— and she will let him do as he wishes. _

_ I must speak. _

_ You must listen.) _

So he trains, eats, prays, learns to wield the word and the sword. For the first time, knows what it is like to be the thing people are afraid of.

They name him Sir Damien, the Pious. Through the ceremony, he can hear his Saint’s voice in his head.

It sounds almost sad.

—————

Caroline _ fights._

She _ lives. _

—————

When he meets Sir Damien, things change.

He’d boasted over meeting the knight who equaled him kill by kill. He had heard of Sir Damien the Pious, of course, and thought the name was a little…. ill-fitting. After all, any man who carried a Saint’s name would have to be otherworldly, and from what he’d heard, Sir Damien…. just wasn’t. He was determined, sure, but weren’t all knights supposed to be?

They are meant to destroy a monster tormenting a nearby village. It’s a two day ride. If they don’t work together, they might die.

_ (They might die, anyway.) _

Then he actually sees Sir Damien.

He is, in fact, smaller than Angelo by at least a head. Thinner, too. But the way he stands is so achingly familiar Angelo has to stop short. He has never been one for poetry nor metaphor, but he swears he knows the look in those eyes. 

Sir Damien meets his eyes and hesitates. He doesn’t say much. Angelo immediately takes to him, anyway. He feels a little… unsettled by Sir Damien, but if his mamma taught him anything, it was to face his wariness head on! Never judge a friend on the first day!

_ (Sir Angelo will see this man throw himself into battles and ballads. He will see the man in love and in turmoil. He will see Sir Damien match him blow for blow and kill for kill. He will see Sir Damien fight even when his bones are giving out under him. He will see this man outgrow silence.) _

_ (“I‘ve found it best to let him ride it out,” he’ll say to Sir Caroline one day, peacekeeper between two opposing forces. But his heart will ache a little, at the distaste in her eyes. _

_ He will not know how remarkable it is, that he can tune out Sir Damien’s words at all.) _

It will turn out that there is more than one monster. Fighting alongside Sir Damien, Angelo will feel like he belongs there. He’s grinning as they take down the plague _ (blood spilling from your mouth as your edges blur as you burst from this cell of a body). _

For the first time, he doesn’t feel sick. 

He feels rather at home, actually, in comradery with this man _ (man?) _ who feels like a lifelong companion merely weeks after meeting him.

Why, he may even dare call Sir Damien a brother.

—————

Sir Damien starts collecting small and big trees, gifts from his brother in arms. He will think of it as a competition until his heart opens up and he is fond, so fond. He is so afraid of losing this

_—again— _

and will do everything to keep up, to keep Sir Angelo by his side, his friend, his rival, his comrade. Sir Angelo smiles, and Damien’s heart will slow down in the comfort of a steady, firm friendship.

—————

Caroline has been in many courts. She has escaped many prisons_ (except one, except this one, the one she locked herself into). _When she walks into the Citadel, she is free.

_ (She isn’t. This isn’t free will, it’s destiny.) _

The Northerners are a superstitious, foolish, entitled bunch. They believe they are the center of the world. They believe in miracles and fairytales, in poetry. 

They believe in sainthood.

She has been called a child all of her life, a girl. Her entire life she has been delivered with hoop after hoop after hoop for being a woman. The Citadel is no different, but it burns in a different way.

Caroline grits her teeth through mud and blood and thinks _ I am brave I am brave I am brave and I will burn you— _

There’s a statue of a Saint in the grounds near the moat jump. She passes by it each morning, fingernails broken and covered in dirt. He stands, slingshot towards the sky, long braid over one shoulder and eyes full of carved anger _ (they’ve got it wrong, they’ve got him wrong, it wasn’t anger, it was love). _

The first time she sees it, she wonders what it must be, to be remembered only by the state of his body.

She scoffs.

_ (They call him Saint Ferdinand, the Brave. He was called a child.) _

—————

A knight named Sir Damien the Pious falls in love with a nice, genius herbalist called Amaryllis. He calls her, among other things, Rilla.

She is not his first love, of this he is quite certain, but he can’t remember the name or face of whoever it might have been. She is not his first love, but she is his forever love, and whenever he looks at her it feels like his heart might burst. 

Rilla isn’t soft, not really. Her edges are jagged from years of sadness and desperation. But… she sings to him, sometimes. When she holds him, Damien feels safe, at peace.

_ (Tranquil, at last.) _

Sometimes he looks at Rilla and feels too big, too brusque for her. Entirely too much, Damien, for this young genius _ (isn’t she older than him wasn’t she older than him not long ago when the Salamander was around he thinks— he thinks he remembers—)__._ He will look at her under the moonlight and think _ I would love you _ and _ I would want you and we destroyed you, we did, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry— _

He asks her to marry him. 

When she says _yes,_ his heart jumps and he picks her up to twirl her around, far away from the Citadel’s watchful halls. For a few precious moments, they can’t stop laughing. He mumbles poetry against her lips between kisses and she bites at his lips in response. His Rilla, his Amaryllis, his forever flower. He gathers her in his arms and doesn’t let her go for hours.

He returns to the Citadel with the joyful news for Sir Angelo. His tree collection gets a new addition. Rilla’s hand stays in his. She laughs when Sir Angelo hugs them both, tearing up from joy. They feast and get drunk and that night Damien takes her home.

When she is tucked against his side, hair spread around the bedsheets to be untangled in the morning, he thinks he could never be happier.

_ (Would I love you if you were of the Citadel would I love you if you were tender if you were delicate if you didn’t smile with all of your teeth like blood might run from them if you didn’t set fires just to categorize the burn would I love you if you didn’t want to eat the world raw would I—? Would I love you if you were fully human—?) _

_ (The first time Rilla sees Damien, sick and desperate at her door, she grimaces at another knight and scoffs at his endless babbling. But before she looks at him, in the split second between registering a presence at her door at turning around, out of the corner of her eye, she can see a giant shadow with claws and her mind s c r e a m s. _

_ Run.) _

_ (But she doesn’t. Rilla never runs.) _

—————

Caroline meets a not-knight who, like her, has had to jump hoops all his life. The big difference: he could not jump the last one.

He asks her life story.

She takes the head of the beast they slayed.

She does not owe him anything. She does not owe _anyone_ anything. Not even the Queen.

_(But she wonders, how things could be different.)_

She does not kill him. It is… not mercy. She doesn’t feel mercy. It’s just... sitting by the fire, Caroline had felt… not at home, home is with her love and her dog, but she would deign call it comradery.

Which is exactly why she had to go.

_ (Marc looks at Caroline’s eyes and cannot tell where the fire reflections end and where her eyes begin. He thinks… he thinks he can see flames in her eye sockets. _

_ “Apparently there’s more than one two-faced monster in these woods, anyway,” he says, only half metaphor.) _

—————

Damien and Rilla fall in love.

In Rilla, Damien recognizes hunger.

_ (Arum doesn’t tell Rilla: if she were fully human, the Keep would not listen.) _

Rilla sees a steady head in crisis and fun, lovely stories and a shining man and slowly, oh so slowly, lets him in. Her heart grows tender for her knight, similar to the fondness she feels for her brothers. Damien smiles at her, wider and wider, and every time he sees her, he revels on her love. He does not wish to bother, but he wishes to be loved by her.

_ (“Amaryllis, will you marry me?”_

_ “I said yes months ago.” _

_ “I would like to hear it again.” _

_ Be aware: when she said _ yes,_ it was by her own will. This matters. It does.) _

—————

There’s a knight called Sir Damien the Pious.

It makes her blood boil for no discernible reason.

—————

Queen Mira calls her knights to attention.

“Who do you serve?”

Sir Angelo and Sir Caroline respond.

“The Queen.”

“And who do you serve above her?”

_ (Good leadership: those who recognize there’s more important people to protect.) _

“The citizens of the Second Citadel.”

_ (The thing is, this is the easiest part to forget.) _

_ (“A knight must have an open heart.”) _

—————

“I have been a knight just as long as you have.” 

That’s a lie.

Sir Angelo knows exactly when their very first Lady Knight was ordained. Everyone knows. Sir Caroline has been a knight for less than him or Sir Damien have been. 

But… it doesn’t feel like a lie.

_ (It isn’t.) _

Something about her serious, set face doesn’t sit right with him.

_ (There’s a child grinning and laughing as he jumps from a ledge into water and a calm, joyful laughter and his cheeks hurt from smiling—) _

“You ought to smile more, Sir Caroline!” He tries. She makes him uncertain.

“No.”

————

The monster in front of them is a child. It begs for mercy.

Caroline has no time for _(cowering children) _run-ons. She kills it swiftly. There is no part of her that decries the violence, because there is no objection to be made when a duty must be fulfilled.

_ (Angelo brushes off his unease with practiced calm. Sir Caroline makes it easier, somehow. He could follow her to battle.) _

——————

Damien meets a monster and his heart aches, just a little bit. He does not listen to it _ (he definitely does). _ However, he listens to the beast, smiles at him, points his weapon at his core.

“A knight of the Queen will not tolerate a monster in Her Majesty’s chambers,” he says. Under the moonlight, he’s nearly glowing_ (oh, how the moon loves the sea). _

_ (Damien lays out his terms and Lord Arum, ruler of the Swamp of Titan’s Blooms, listens. _

This_ is free will.) _

“Approach me, beast, and we’ll see who dies. By the Saints above, I am tranquility itself.”

“And proud of it, aren’t you?”

_ (What Arum won’t admit: this knight made him uneasy.) _

_ (A challenge, he thinks, and finally finally he delights as he grins with a thousand teeth—) _

They fight. Damien wins, broken leg and all _ (when did a broken leg ever stop a force of nature?). _ This night, he shows mercy. _ There is something human in your eyes— _

_ I can see, I can see what you truly are. _

When he prays, Damien hears the sea. He has long stopped being afraid.

He will lose tomorrow. He will lose for days to come.

_ (“Are you a master of anything, besides prattling on and on?” _

_ “No.”) _

————

Sometimes, Damien almost remembers.

Praying to his Saint brings him peace, keeps him centered. But sometimes, out of the corner of his mind’s eye, he can see

_—do you remember?—_

shapes like wings, a glow.

“Tranquility does not lie solely in standing still, friend lizard! True calm comes from keeping one’s head in a crisis!”

He runs from the rat set upon him _ (and oh, Lord Arum of the Swamp of Titan’s Blooms had stolen his tranquility with those violet eyes and quick wit, had gotten his claws on Damien’s own pounding heart), _he prays. Calm washes over him, his senses falling into harmony. He thinks he can hear the sound of waves…

_ I didn’t drown I didn’t and you won’t drown me— _

The peace takes place in his mind and lungs like the caress of ghostly fingers. He will always chase this feeling _(he will forget it soon)._ The waves wash over him. _Saint Damien, your tranquility, your tranquility…_ _Saint Damien be my mantra..._

He strikes. The rat will never know anything but its hunger.

_ (Lord Arum will watch this from the trees and think fairy tales. He will tell his Keep and it will fall silent. _

_ But Arum will be silent, too, in the darkness of his lab. He will remember the look in the knight’s eyes as the Shriek Weed screamed, the dangerous look of _

_ —a beast about to pounce about to shred another to pieces in the name of defending its nest and its people_ _—_

_ a man, about to kill in the name of love. Then, the Shriek Weed tricked the Knight again with his lover’s voice, and the unease passed. This does not stop him from wondering. _

_ “How are your observations of yourself?”) _

————

A knight gives another a letter meant for a herbalist, the love of (_ this _) his life.

He smiles.

_ (That smile carries with it the mourning of a dying sea and the curve of it is the one down Terminus falls, down and down into the emptiness below. He won’t see it. His companion, with shoulders the width of the Southern Frosts’ mountains, does not think anything of it.) _

“After all, it’s easier, is it not? To mourn a man who was a monster all along?”

_ (Is it?) _

“I have no mind for metaphors,” the man with caves for a mouth tells him, unsure of where the metaphor is in what is clearly another poem.

_ (“Oh, Saint Damien, if only I had your strength! I know not what I want I know not what I am!” _

_ Not yet.) _

————

Angelo, with unease in his gut, does as Sir Damien asks of him and looks for Rilla.

When he sees the empty, lifeless hut, his blood rushes. He runs.

She isn’t there. The door is torn, there’s claw marks on the walls. He feels a rage older than he boiling in his veins. She has been taken and who would take her and a million other questions fleet around his head. Angelo is not a fool, this must have been a monster. He also knows, the way he knows an amethyst from a jadeite, that Rilla, bright, ambitious, powerful Rilla, is not dead. 

He will make sure whoever took her dies, however.

He looks through Rilla’s hut. Under her cot, towards which he apologizes for touching, he finds a piece of purple cloth. He swears by it to end whoever it belongs to. Angelo loves Rilla, after all. His clever herbalist friend will not be abandoned. 

He runs back to Sir Damien. 

Sir Damien pales. His eyes turn dark, hateful, regretful, deep and anxious like

_ —the cliffside— _

the dark caves Angelo comes from, the ones he conquered when he was but a child.

_ (Damien stops hearing the fireworks. _

_ “By my arrow”, he swears. “I will strike him in the heart, just as he has struck me.” _

_ In his mind, waves.) _

_ (Beware, the sea will not forgive you.) _

—————

She falls half in love with a witch. She’s lively and dangerous and, saints, Caroline has always liked danger. Great thing, really, because without her love for danger, she would have missed the softness of the spaces in between.

Quanyii is vibrant and unpredictable. Caroline doesn’t mind it when she calls her babe. She teases Quanyii and runs her fingers through her hair _ (did she know this feeling, before?)._ When her lover laughs and riddles, she feels complete through her annoyance.

_ (She will protect Quanyii, too. Whatever the Citadel chooses to be, it’s not a place for magic.) _

She’s lying down, eyes closed and in pain, when Quanyii chooses the moment to pop in and sit on top of her.

She doesn’t mean to do it. When she feels Quanyii’s weight her brain screams and she reacts faster than thought_ (a breath before an ambush...). _ She grabs Quanyii and throws her down and away from her, pounces forward with a hand on the witch’s neck.

Quanyii stares.

“I…” She doesn’t feel like she can apologize for something she did purely on instinct_ (where is she where is she she could swear there was a battle—), _but Quanyii is looking at her with intent that’s scaring her.

Her eyes shift from shock to something more inquisitive, calculating. Quanyii’s gaze traces every one of Caroline’s features slowly, cold and analytical. Caroline doesn’t squirm, but her jaw tightens. Slowly, Quanyii smiles _ (fangs and blood and I will eat the world raw I will burn)._ Caroline feels exposed.

“Well,” her witch says, voice full of dark glee. “If you wanted to play, babe, you should have just asked!”

_ (Quanyii will make a deal with her lover and she will break it. Caroline will walk into the monsters’ den and she will follow, mask their trails. The Court can’t know. Fort Terminus houses horrors, and Quanyii won’t let them be unleashed upon her lover.) _

_ (She will see Rilla. Birds of a feather flock together.) _

_ (She will see Angelo and Damien, too. Destiny is a funny thing. Quanyii will roll her eyes with her work cut out for her. She creates a sunset and blocks the suns right in front of the Court. She keeps the truth from the monsters. She doesn’t know what they would do, if they realized the beings responsible for their failures had walked right into their claws.) _

——————

Caroline will accept Angelo, if not enthusiastically. He is… familiar.

She resents Damien. He unsettles her. Him and his eyes and his words stick to her like honey and leave everything that kind of too-sweet the Northerners seem to love.

Disgusting.

Then Angelo brings him along, and she has to deal with his rambling nonsense. She should stab him, but such actions are frowned upon in this foolish lands. She does slap him, however, to Angelo’s horror. He prays too much, speaks too much, and never gives an answer. 

Angelo is soft where she is not _(sentimentality)._ He gets the answers from his… friend. 

_ (“Where else does one feel mercy, Sir Caroline?” _

_ I wouldn’t know. I never have.) _

She lets him come with. Somehow, she can’t say no. It’s like… she’s supposed to have him there, too. 

_ (Destiny.) _

How annoying. Everything about this situation is annoying. It’s on her for wanting to be a knight, she supposes. First, she fought for every last scrap of respect she has, and now she fights for every bit of her sanity.

_ (Angelo calls it an unexpected twist. He could not be more mistaken.) _

She does not like having to report to the Queen either, so she tries to sneak away. She fails, much to her chagrin, but… she will accept this compromise too, for a while.

The monsters are organized _ (again)_. Something inside her is perturbed at the news. She is a ready knife, but does not know when or how to strike. That is the worst part of it all.

_ (The Queen cannot hold you down, child, she cannot rule over you, you are the sun and bow to no one, you strike fear into everyone who opposes you—) _

——————

Caroline will allow herself this: in the quiet of the village, she will miss the rocking of the boats in the water.

——————

It makes sense Damien and Caroline would not get along.

Tell me, did the sea ever love the sun?

——————

When Damien sees the water, it throws him off balance. 

It’s _ poisoned water poisoned poisoned dangerous what is this what is this move away move away this is not my water not my home this isn’t my place— _

“Stay out of the water.” 

He didn’t need the warning, why would he? He would know cursed water

_ —whirpools closing in tearing flesh the water listened to him do you know what it takes to invoke the wrath of the calmest saint, do you— _

clearly a sign a sign of his Saint forsaking him. His mind is clouded by fog and he cannot think anything except _ Rilla, Rilla, Saint Damien please. _

He calls for tranquility. It does not come.

So he goes into the water.

_ (What was he doing, you asked? He called for the waves, tried to paddle across this poisoned water and regain his self. Did you hear the howl, the hound? The vengeance, the vengeance, I prayed when the waves struck my sides I prayed— _

_ And the waves answered.) _

_ (The Moonlit Hermit wants to live. It wants to live so desperately, with that useless, impossible body that the Universe grants its wish and bends the laws of physics around it. _

_ Damien, comes the name into Rilla’s mind, fighting monsters while comatose.) _

——————

Angelo watches over Damien and his heart breaks a little. Sir Damien is his best friend and rival, his brother in arms. To see him reduced to the fog in his eyes… it’s disheartening.

To Sir Caroline, he says, “I trust you like I might the Queen.”

He doesn’t quite add the fact that Sir Damien and Sir Caroline both hold his trust and loyalty in a much deeper way even the Queen might. It is burned into his very bones, this love. He has never known how the absence of this love feels, but he has missed it.

He is determined. He will not let them be crushed. He will protect them, if it’s the last thing he does. He follows them to the edge of the world. 

_ (Again.) _

——————

Here is what Damien, Caroline and Angelo will never tell their Queen:

When they saw the red meat spread over Vivian’s hut, they were hungry.

_ (But here’s what makes them different: their hungers do not guide them.) _

——————

Words were his weapon. That’s what they were told.

Lies. 

_ (But… were they? What kind of words must be spoken, for monsters to show mercy?) _

Do not let him speak to you, you might drown.

_ (“I am less certain than ever before that there are no monsters in Ballast village—”) _

_ (“One shot, before he wakes!”) _

——————

_ Mercy? I wouldn’t know. _

Caroline knows, at last.

“I would like to be awake for this,” the (_ not _ ) witch says to her, and her skin itches under the gaze of his sightless eyes. She has no time for _ (cowering children) _ run-ons. Vivian is _ (not a coward) _concise and determined. 

_ (When did the sea ever love the sun? That night on the witch’s hut, Damien almost remembers. Sir Caroline shines, and he trusts her.) _

She sends Angelo and Damien away, and allows herself to feel this devastation.

“Do you miss it?”

She doesn’t know what she expects to hear, or what she wants to hear. Vivian does not miss anything. She misses something she knows nothing about. It is soothing, still, for that gaping wound she carries in her cold, unforgiving hands. She smiles.

——————

Here’s one thing the Knights of the Crown can understand about Vivian: he died for that which he loved.

Here’s one thing they understand about Nimue: she killed for it.

_ Think of this. _

——————

“To tell you the truth, Knights, I want her to be free,” Vivian says, and Damien’s heart cries for him. He knows that kind of love, has known it all of his life. It pulls him in and scoops him up in safe arms. He doesn’t know what to believe, because, surely, a being loved this way cannot be evil.

_ (Who can love evil, irrational things who only hunger? Who can love that which has not a scrap of warmth, not the beating of a bleeding soul?) _

_ “ _And really I want her to be free much sooner than my body will let me.”

Damien watches as Sir Angelo takes Nimue away and his heart aches.

“Do you really think they can feel such things, Sir Caroline?”

“I think it’s far too easy to think someone else doesn’t feel, Sir Damien.”

_ (“Knights slay monsters, don’t they?”) _

He helps bury Vivian. He prays.

Tranquility does not come.

——————

“It is our sworn duty to kill monsters, to cleanse the monsters’ blight upon this land.”

Upon hearing those words from his best of friends and rivals, Angelo’s stomach quakes again. He had almost forgotten this feeling _ (why do you lie? The earth never forgets what it feels to be shaken). _

Why are Sir Damien’s eyes still so empty? Once, they carried the fierce entirety of the sea’s beauty, miles and miles of serene waves. Today, they carry only a darkness Angelo might fall into, if he looks too long.

He is _ scared— _

“To kill it would be a killing twice over.”

Why is he starting to believe that might be true of Damien and his monster, too?

_ (Caroline signs her last letter “Sir Caroline of the Southern Frosts”. It is not acquiescence. The Queen has no right tallying judgment on her life. It reminds her, coldly and unforgiving, that she does not belong in the Citadel, even if she has killed herself a thousand times in its name.) _

——————

Damien and Angelo are “saved” by Marc’s invention.

Funny thing, they would not have drowned. The lake would not have dared.

_ (Marc does not like Damien. _

_ They say that when one of your senses is blocked, the other ones become more attuned. Marc’s senses have always worked perfectly, but to become a Knight he learned to watch and listen, past anything they might throw at him. _

_ And he doesn’t like how blurry Damien is, how loudly his voice carries the cadence of the sea.) _

——————

“We’re older than both of you!” 

_ (That’s a lie.) _

Damien rolls his eyes.

_ (He is particularly offended by Marc’s claims of inventing the fishing net. _

_ As if Marc would ever be as cunning as a fisherman. Someone like him could never come up with their noblest of tools.) _

——————

His best friend and rival calls the Salamander a tick. Angelo does not understand.

Who are they to judge a man who feasts on blood? 

_ (—the meat he eats is red, red, red—) _

_ (—they were hungry _—)

_ (“Simple creatures, bloody creatures, but could one truly say evil?”) _

“Your heart proves too open for its own good.” Damien’s eyes are haunted and joyless, spiteful. Angelo’s heart is an endless pit he fills with love and joy and

_ —the earth bent under his will he is vast and endless and gaping jaws— _

the memories of his best days stored alongside the lessons from his worst ones.

“Why need I fear him?” Angelo will not be scared of man nor monster. No creature will draw his blood without permission, no beast will make him quake. Why would this man, their admirer, do so? He reassures Damien the best way he knows how and he thinks _ I am not scared of him I am not scared but I am afraid for you what happen to your eyes your eyes I won’t let you be crushed— _

——————

Damien and Angelo do not realize there is something off with the women from the trees.

Beast recognizes beast. How would they know one in disguise, if they can’t recognize themselves?

_ (They’re here. They’re here. The nymphs know very well what a beast is. In their champions, they see… _

_ Sunny and Pitley buzz with excitement. It’s been so long.) _

——————

“Perhaps they are monsters with some good in them!” The eldest brother said.

“Perhaps,” the most shaken of them conceded. “But is it possible that monsters with said souls might be…”

He will have the answer, one day, when he looks at a four-armed monster with violet eyes.

It hurts so much, to think that no monster is worthy of life at all. Why does it hurt so much? Everything used to be so simple and now he grasps at straws. Where has tranquility gone? He cannot find it, and he cannot find himself. Monsters with good souls? He does not want to remember

_ —violet eyes and an indignant huff and that gentle roughness as his arm was bandaged— _

the toll of Saint Damien’s bells over his head as his heart broke over the thought of spilling Lord Arum’s blood.

_ (“He was undoubtedly evil,” Angelo will say. _

_ “As they all are,” Damien will reassure himself. The words are half bite and tinted with despair. _

_ It stings, he can’t agree. His heart cries. He is being crushed— _

_ “A knight knows what’s best in his heart.” _

_ “Do we?” _

_ Did we?) _

——————

Damien steps unto the platform and performs for the Nymphs. For the first time in weeks, he is tranquil. He is at peace. And so, he opens his mouth, and begins.

They Nymphs still. They listen to him. Of course they do. His voice rises and lowers. It quivers through its layers and it buzzes alongside their wings. The soft light of the day hits his face and his eyes shine, wide and never-ending, pulling them— 

_ (“You’ve robbed from me my memory!”) _

—in. Damien is not unhappy, now, not in turmoil. The words fall off his tongue, remembered (_ from the books or from the—?) _ with a surety that is nearly hypnotizing _ . _ He is at home, here, in a way he’d never thought he’d be. Word after word, he recites what should have been a four hour long epic in two minutes instead. The nymphs cling unto every word, eyes as wide as his and so, so dark…

_ (“As friend killed only friend.”) _

When he finishes, he smiles

_ —a smile of a thousand teeth, too white and too pointy, he’s slipping, he is burning his eyes are singing with the Cliffside’s voice— _

and bows to a standing ovation.

——————

Angelo does not know what to make of Marc, the Salamander. It is not often that he is confused _ (the earth shakes but it is never shaken). _

Nothing can stop him. Not even this odd… fluttering of the heart.

He charges. 

_ (There is a brief, eternal second, in which Marc looks at Angelo charging at him and sees not a man but a giant, dark and great and— _

_ He jumps out of the way.) _

——————

Damien feels his control slipping, slipping as he fights Marc and _ how dare you how dare you imply I would call you that stop your lies your lies— _

_ (Proud, aren’t you? Arrogance will blind you to your mistakes. Careful, child, you are drowning.) _

_ (Marc’s voice grows stronger and stronger and stronger and so does his shaking. _

_ He slaps Damien and says I did it to remind you that you hate me, but the truth is: he needed to make sure the knight was real—) _

_ (“There is no understanding men or humans, Pit.” Sunny says. She did not know they still needed to breath.) _

He cannot let Sir Angelo die, he can’t, he won’t,_ not again— _

_ Again? _

_ (The Damsel does not care for the human and its steed. No, beast recognizes beast. It can hear monsters being torn to shreds by this creature’s salted claws.) _

——————

Collect yourself. _ Breathe _.

Damien strikes when the time is right. 

——————

Here is a truth Damien knows: 

There are hidden worlds in every heart and every soul. Those worlds are hidden out of shame or bravado. Sometimes, you will not knot they exist _ (yet) _ as they sit on your shade. Each of those worlds is unknowable by others. Those without them, those whose desires are so simple they are controlled by their hungers, are nothing. Beings with forms and words and wants, and nothing else. 

He knows he was close to joining them.

He does not know: this truth applies to him in many ways.

——————

In the name of survival, you throw away your soul. You take the weapon too terrible for a monster, and keep struggling. You are afraid to die, you can forget to live. You can make wonders with that will to live, you can make abominations with that fear of dying. Nothing else matters. Right?

Indeed, Amaryllis of Exile, this is the most important question you will ever ask.

_ (“Do the right thing. Be brave.”) _

_ (Rilla sings. The Keep listens.) _

——————

Caroline kills the monster. While she does, she grins.

“How disappointing.”

At the woman’s amazement, she laughs. There’s blood spilled all over her armor, splattered like a dreadful, glorious firework.

“Let’s get you up.”

_ (Run.) _

Caroline helps the woman up and freezes because she recognizes

_ —grinning like she could take over the world fangs covered in blood this woman has the sea at her fingertips the universe sings the moon shines and shines and the sea— _

Damien’s fiancée.

She hates this job.

She is tired. She is angry. When the herbalist refuses to answer, her anger boils over, kept in check only by her tenuous grasp on civility. She must serve her Citadel, however, die and kill for it. If she must, she will slay this herbalist’s, cut her throat open and watch her crumble. Protect the Citadel at all costs. She will not be stopped by monster, man nor witch.

She dislikes this herbalist. Fire is not friendly to flowers.

——————

Their adventure together goes as well as anyone might expect.

“You really want to fight a monster war alone?”

_ (I was alone I was alone that day I was alone in life but we will all be alone in death I was never lonely but that day when the sun shone for me I was alone—) _

Caroline sneers. Women are fine but that is certainly not the case with this one, soft for poetry and prone to complaining. This… this traitor is infuriating, she is deceiving and suspicious. She is full of… 

_ love _

and badly-concealed softness. Caroline despises tender.

_ (Which part of love is tender? We kill for love and die for it, we burn and we sink and we drown. Love can start a war. Love can end it. Love is a force of revolution, of change. Even if it weren’t, child, what is wrong about craving that which is tender? _

_ Some things are worth dying for. Some things are worth living for.) _

_ (The Moonlit Hermit lived for life itself and died for the sun. It forgot. It forgot to be desperate and live.) _

——————

The sight of the Northern Edge of the World makes her sick. It’s indecent and nauseating. This endlessly replenishing ocean is upsetting and obscene and

_ —remember do you remember the day the sea opened up and swallowed the beasts whole when the earth rained down and ate ate ate and the sky smelled of charred flesh— _

hard to look away from, isn’t it?

When the horn sounds, the herbalist insists they follow it. She calls it a shell.

It’s not. It’s a courthouse. A tall tower with a skylight.

Is the herbalist blind?

_ (A knight and a herbalist walk into the Spiral Court. _

_ The knight feels sick.) _

“Here’s a description for you: a circular room with a lot of monsters in it, a dais with a garish metal podium, and overly-busy tapestries. Everything clashes, and it’s awful! The end!”

She can feel it in her gut. Life has left traces in this room the same way storms leave puddles in the grounds, a humidity hanging in the air. This place is a ghost of whatever it was before. This place used to be beautiful. Now, it’s just full to the brim with ridiculous monsters, trophies for the taking. 

_ (Do you remember?) _

She sees the slime monster hum a ridiculous song and call what comes out of him _ The Universe _ and is utterly, completely disgusted. She wants to run him through, set him alight. She wants to destroy this mockery of a court and take each monster’s head to her Queen’s instead.

——————

“His ambition is lost. His heart is in others, now.”

His heart.

_ Listen. _

——————

Angelo smiles at Talfryn and thinks _ child _.

He is wrong, of course. But he wants to protect this man, just like he wants to protect all his other comrades. He wishes to use his strength and his courage to lift Talfryn’s spirit.

He’s family, now. 

Angelo will always protect his family.

_ (“A monster with a heart? It is impossible!” _

_ Is it?) _

——————

“What do you think ails him so?” One knight asks another.

The other does not listen, he freezes and mutters and grasps at straws—

“We’re falling, falling into the swallowing sky below. Oh, Saint, it all seemed so simple once.”

Beware, just because something seemed simple, does not mean it ever was.

This time, neither of the two knows what to do. The two are blinded by love. 

“First, I shall reassure you that you are one of the greatest monster-slayers of the land!”

“But should we slay them at all?” Damien asks, and the eldest brother hesitates, an old grief in his chest that, for the briefest of second, makes him pause. “And is it impure of me to question?”

_ (—he will hesitate—) _

“And I shall tell you that you are a very good person as well!” Angelo continues, grins as he forgets, forgets the weight on his shoulders that threatens to topple him. He cannot fall, not while his brother is like this. His voice booms, moves between planes. “Of clear moral standing!”

“Do you really think so? Because—”

_ (Talfryn does not turn around once while they talk. He is uneasy. Out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he can see figures, shadows. He has not felt comfortable since Marc left. Between these knights, he feels small and insignificant. This is not a thought born out of a poor reflection of himself, but one born from the glow of Damien and Angelo’s shapes, the way they seem to be never still, always changing, harder and harder to look at the farther down the beach they get.) _

——————

Damien feels like he might tip over a cliffside, like he might sink into this sand and the ground will eat him up and drag him to the world’s core, past its edge, to be flung over the border like a discarded piece of debris.

“A hero? These days I hardly even know what that means!” 

What is a hero? Who is a hero? Protecting others, fighting so they will not. Shielding the innocent. Killing the enemies. _ How are these different? How can I know? Wasn’t I a hero— _

_ before? _

_ —I can’t remember I can’t remember, oh saint— _

“Oh, Saint Damien, lend me your tranquility. I have not felt it in weeks now, and I fear I move further from you with every step!”

He is a ship without compass, a boat left adrift. He is the frayed edge of a thread, pulling and pulling at himself. He can’t remember how it feels to be at peace.

_ (—he will always chase this feeling—) _

“A sign, oh, Saint Damien, please.”

_ (There are two things you ought to know. _

_ One: you cannot borrow something that was yours along. What is yours cannot be lent to you. _

_ Two: in the face of something it was desperate for, the Moonlit Hermit forgets to live.) _

——————

There is a warmth in his stomach as he realizes who it is they’re heading towards. An old—

_ friend _

—legend. The Terminus Shore, home to the greatest Sage. This is what saintly providence looks like: the hush of the water at the home of the mightiest Sage. Upon this shore, a single spiral piece hosts Damien’s hope.

“But don’t monsters have that kind of power?” Talfryn asks, and something in Damien twists, ugly and blinding.

He smiles _ (a thousand teeth, a manic look, cursed water). _ Explains, “Saints _ ask _for permission from the powers above to bend those rules. And with that permission granted, they know their acts are good.”

“But,” says the knight who is not a Knight, who does not want to be one _ (he will feel, soon, the weight of blood on his hands and he will not be able to carry it) _. He does not hesitate to question. “How are you supposed to tell the difference?”

The knight who is not a man looks at him, and in those eyes there is only turbulence. 

But did they—

_ we _

—really know, look at what’s been done—

_ look at what we left behind look at what we died for _

—have you seen this have you seen how_ — _

_ we spilled our own blood for this war that’s taking more and more and we killed and we killed and we keep killing and we didn’t know we didn’t know is this what we call—? _

“Faith, my friend.”

_ (Love is a force of revolution. Love changes. Arum stands in front of the court looking at Amaryllis and he regrets. Damien stands before him and hesitates.) _

——————

Caroline will stand with the herbalist in front of the Spiral Court and hate everything about it. She’s survived many court trials, escaped many prisons (_ except one just one the most important one) _, but the Spiral court and its delusional judge tear at her the way nothing else quite has. 

She isn’t scared. 

She is _ angry _. 

She has no idea what she is supposed to do here except listen and allow these beasts speak over her and it angers here. Things are meant to make sense. Life is never really fair, never really just, but it makes sense because the universe wills it to. It wants the people to be happy _ and how do I know this why would I know this these are all fairy tales these are all memories _—

The Judge’s spit tells them what to do and skips the correct procedures and as the judge relishes, as the witnesses laugh and laugh _ how d’your femurs taste like, _Caroline is angry, she bristles and she burns. And when the herbalist speaks and entertains them as though that might save them, as though appealing to madness is the only thing logical, she wants to grab her sword and run it through every monster’s laughing throat. 

_ (It wasn’t supposed to be like this it wasn’t supposed to be like this how dare they stand in this fort’s ruins in the bones they shattered things were meant to be better it was all supposed to be better—) _

She watches the huge (_ lying _ ) slug call his slime “the Universe” and something inside her screams with rage. This isn’t the universe, _ this isn’t how the universe is supposed to be how dare he call himself Helicoid— _

_ (Arum will not lie. Hearing Amaryllis’ voice again makes him want to fight. It saves him, when he would have given up. _

_ He will not lie. The reason he stares and stares at the bright pink creature is because, for a golden second, next to Amaryllis, he thinks he’s seen the sun.) _

——————

Outside the court, Angelo grins down at Talfryn. He thinks he is being kind. This young boy is nearly shaking with his own worry, and it breaks Angelo’s heart a little to see him so. No one should ever have to feel this kind of fear, no brother should feel abandoned by another. There should never be anyone who mourns, who carries fear so intricately and deeply etched into their bones it becomes the marrow itself. 

_ (“Do either of you hear anything?” _

_ “The tranquil breath of the waves, of course. Saint Damien’s blessing! Perhaps this shall be the path to my redemption!”) _

“If one fears sound and silence,” he tries, he is not a poet _ (and he is not a man) _, but he still tries to make himself understood, for he understands concern and fear and power, “why, one must always be afraid!”

“That’s not... Actually, that makes a lot of sense.”

Of course it does, Angelo is not a poet _ (or a man), _ but his brother is one. Besides, the desire to help others will always make a heart sing, make sure the message comes through, a warm blanket in the cold. His grin grows wider.

_ (—too wide, a forest and an endless row of teeth, we used to call bodies bone caves but his is an entire system of them, a vast, endless pit—) _

There is only one solution: have no fear.

“Okay, I guess a knight has… no fear.”

Wrong.

_ (“I… was.”) _

Only monsters have no fears.

_ (“And it will destroy you,” Arum will say. “And...I can’t...I won’t live in that world.”) _

No fear... no fear... _ no fear… _

——————

Two monsters who are not monsters and a man who is just that enter what once was a sacred place and now is house to blasphemy.

Together, they look at the tapestries.

“There must be some metaphorical meaning I’m not aware of. There’s the Sage, clearly, but he is surrounded by both humans and monsters.”

_ Remember. _

——————

A witch who is not yet a witch asks another, _ how does magic work? _

The monster had no answer for her. The witch does.

_ (“Sir Damien. If you Tell him about every obstacle, he’ll never learn!” _

_ “And if I don’t he’ll never live, Sir Angelo.”) _

——————

“I’ve never killed a monster before.”

Angelo’s heart breaks.

He had killed in this life before he had lived at all. He was born, with blood in his hands, to live a new life where he stained them again.

_ (Talfryn is no child, but he is young still. Older than these knights, perhaps, but not nearly enough for this. He will not be able to bear it, won’t stand the stain of his first kill.) _

This is just the thing he’s been looking for.

_ I hope you don’t have to. _

——————

Angelo has a plan for his pupil to prove himself. 

_ (Tell me there is another way—) _

Slowly, surely, he dodges out of his cover, stands tall.

_ (—all sixteen feet of him a man who is a mountain and a cliff endless and great and will not be crushed will not be scared will crush foes between the diamonds he has for teeth and spit out the dust—) _

He lets his voice boom around the empty, ruined halls.

“Stand still, _ beast _. A true warrior approaches now.”

“A true warrior! A human?” The thing that stands in his way cackles. “I haven’t feared a human in centuries!

_ (“How’s a monster plant learn that?”) _

The slime monster keeps laughing, until it doesn’t. It backs away and stands at full height, puts on a bravado. Angelo advances. One foot, then another. The salt between his fingers spills in useless, iridescent fragments.

“I say, you do not scare me, little creature! You are nothing…”

Angelo keeps on walking. He will not be stopped.

“Blast you, say something! I do not f-fear you! The universe speaks through me, you know!”

He raises his sword.

_ (Rilla asks _ wouldn’t that make a contradiction _ and Quanyii grins, wide and thirsty. Rilla is cunning, precious Amaryllis connecting the dots, one by one, piece by piece. And if her lover is who Quanyii thinks she is, then she has the Universe at her fingertips— _

_ She lets her voice buzz and zoom and rattle in pretty Rilla’s head. _

_ “You would need a god.”) _

_ (There is a single moment, with his sword raised high and his voice released, that Angelo hesitates, blind with a rage that does not feel like his own. In the space of a single thought, he thinks of killing the beast once and for all.) _

——————

Caroline keeps walking and her eyes stray away from the witch. She is boiling. Quanyii broke their deal. She is angry and she is worried and, saints, emotions are a nauseating, confusing thing. Quanyii shouldn’t be here. Not here, in this monster den, in this once-sacred place, a hollowed out tusk that Caroline feels like setting fire to.

Her lover and the herbalist seem to be getting along.

Great.

“Sometimes I lie just because it’s fun. Do you ever do that, tall, dark, and cranky?”

“I don’t.”

_ You lie. _

She can’t stand this. The walls are suffocating, the silence is crushing. Every echo of her footsteps feels wrong, out of place, like a portrait made from memory when the subject is right there. She wants out of here. She will slay this lizard and then take both these women out of here. She will hand Damien his fiancée and wash her hands clean.

“I have broken out of many prisons before

_ (you have) _

and I am stronger

_ (you are) _

than I was then.”

_ (I’m sorry.) _

“I can handle whatever these monsters have in store.”

_ You can’t. _

_ Not alone. _

_ (“A miracle,” Rilla offers up, eyes glazed over and the stars, they twinkle in her eyes, she is _

_ —god touched— _

_ magic cut short and asphyxiated. _

_ “Or a catastrophe. So tell me, sweets,—”) _

——————

There is an imposter in these chambers. He calls himself a sage. He says_ the Universe _ speaks through _ him. _

Damien’s mind screams. 

_ How would you know the Universe, you hideous beast? _

“I am Helicoid, the Spiral Judge.”

_ YOU ARE NOT. _

——————

Listen to your_ — _

_ heart _

_ — _instincts.

And 

**remember**: 

no fear.

——————

Caroline is this close to biting down and eating the herbalist raw. This is her investigation. She earned this. She earned this and she has had to watch it come apart. First, Sir Angelo brings Sir Damien. Then Vivian happened. And now this, the herbalist and Quanyii, both acting as if they’re friends, disrespecting her authority, violating their deal.

_ I did not get lucky. I earned this I earned this I did not get lucky— _

This is the first investigation she’s ever had. The results of this will haunt her the rest of her life as a knight. She cannot let it fall to pieces, not anymore. She will make this a success, by force if need be. She will destroy any and all who oppose her, and she will come back victorious to the Citadel.

But, first.

She grits her teeth and cedes a single inch.

_ (She remembers Caroline over her, eyes made of molten flame and factions blurry, changing, in this universe and the next. Shining skin. Had those been wings or just solar flames? Those burning, searching eyes gaping open with the light of ten thousand stars and the darkness in between had looked at her and Quanyii had been afraid.) _

——————

“You are a false prophet, snail,” Damien bites out. “These tapestries show Sage Helicoid clearly and he is clearly a human! A very old man with a ceremonial helmet and a long, flowing cloak, carrying a spiral shield!”

Sir Angelo blinks, “Where is that? I don’t see it.”

Damien recoils. How can Sir Angelo not see it? How can his best friend and rival be so blind? Where did it what is so clearly the truth get lost? It’s right there.

The imposter says, “That looks more like a snail to me.” 

He yells. This snail is an imposter and a fraud and he will not stand for this he won’t this monster is not Helicoid he’s not Helicoid was the messenger of the Universe not this lying performer_ — _

“I could see it either way, to be honest,” his comrade offers up, earnest.

_ (Guess. Who is correct?) _

——————

“Aren’t you here because you literally pushed Damien down a flight of stairs and stole his job?” Demands the delusional herbalist, the traitor. 

“You, _ charmed one _, probably haven’t noticed the disadvantages one starts out with in a field brimming with people who want to see you fail,” she bites out, white fangs glowing, dripping, dripping...

_ I will do anything to level the playing field. _

She listens to Quanyii go on and on and play with the herbalist’s minds. She observes Rilla as she folds the knowledge she has gained into her core. She feels the way they are both connecting.

_ I will not fail I will never fail I am better than you I will burn you I will earn us victory. _

_ (Fort Terminus is the last stronghold of the monsters in the Northern Wilds, their domain, their armory. It didn’t use to be. This is their exile place, but once… once. Once upon a time, it was a home— _

_ They place their fear monster here. It will be a terrible choice. Place a swimmer in a lake full of blood, watch them struggle.) _

——————

Three thousand years ago, the First Citadel was destroyed. All the monsters united in a plan of attack. They failed.

Their attack wiped out most of recorded history beforehand.

Keep in mind:

Not all monsters. Never, never all monsters.

The First Citadel was not destroyed. The corpse stands standing. The ghosts stay dying.

_ (Caroline feels sick.) _

——————

The imposter dies.

The Universe does not mourn him.

_ (The man who killed him does.) _

——————

Before he dies, the false prophet lies to the Knight of the Crown,_ ‘If he isn’t dead already.’ _

The Knight forgets how to breathe.

_ (The Moonlit Hermit forgets—) _

“If he isn’t… what did you say?” He repeats, discovering a new kind of grief.

Thrown over the edge of the world. Down the Terminus falls…

down

and 

_ down _

and… 

_ (—off the scale you must be tossed entire—) _

He falls.

——————

Caroline gives out the orders. She does not hear Quanyii reprimanding her for being cruel. Why would she regret?

She can’t lose. She can’t. She won’t. She cannot lose or _it_ _will be all over everything will be over I will have lost and I can’t lose I can’t fail not again— _

_ (“You are nothing!”) _

_ (Caroline is fading, blurring around the edges, so Quanyii reaches out, steadies her, if only for a second, grounds her to this world, this form. She loves Caroline, this shape and this strength of hers. She does not want her to lose herself amongst the ghosts. This is why she came.) _

She fights the pigs. She fights them and kills them again and again and again. She spills their blood on herself and her armor and keeps slashing, bursting their bodies wide open. She doesn’t stop fighting even when they come back to life, keeps at it, throws herself into combat and slashes, slashes, _ burns. _

Then, the pigs take Quanyii and_— _

_ Rilla. _

And Caroline wakes up.

She cedes another inch.

“That is very possible, _ Rilla,” _ she says, her voice as soft as it will ever get. It is a warm hearth, calling others to gather around. “But slaying monsters is only the second of a knight’s priorities,” she will tell the shocked herbalist. She will be slightly shocked herself. 

_ I have chosen to protect you. _

A good knight is bound by duty.

A hero is bound by _ (love, mercy, kindness) _ their will to protect.

Rilla is a citizen of the Second Citadel. Above everyone else, the Queen and even herself, she serves her people. Always, until she dies, this will be her duty, it will be her livelihood.

She still makes sure to let the herbalist know Quanyii was the most likely of the two to save herself, however. No amount of learning will get her to be tender. She will not appear soft. But_ — _

_ (Caroline asks Rilla to sing to distract the pigs. The pigs listen. _

_ One life bleeds to another and power comes through and when you spend so much time next to the sea, you will learn to sing to its tide, Damien would sing for her and Rilla would sing back—) _

She looks at Rilla. For a moment, she allows herself to be.

“I’ve lived

_ a lot _

of lives before this one, Rilla. And when you

_ reinvent _

yourself or when you are

_ forced _

to reinvent yourself. Well it’s....”

She loses her words. The young herbalist looks at her with something like dawning comprehension, a soft understanding. It grates at her, a little, but she listens anyway. Fire is welcoming, too. 

“Like the old versions of you keep… _ bleeding _ into the new one,” her voice is lost, eyes stuck in a distance past. “It gets hard to draw boundaries and figure out the new rules. I know.”

Caroline nearly, nearly smiles, “I like my life as a knight much better than

_ any _

I’ve had yet. I’d like to keep it. So, _ thank you _ for reminding me how to do that.”

Rilla smiles. She has no questions. It baffles her.

“I don’t care what you used to be.”

_ (Remember: Rilla saying ‘yes’ was always free will.) _

Caroline blinks. Rilla shines, low and pale. This time, she smiles, “Good. Thank you, Rilla.”

_ (Quanyii butts in, quietly grateful. When Caroline smiles at her, a gift and a secret, she has stopped raging entirely. The sun and the moon are opposites, yet they make each other beautiful. Quanyii’s heart flies.) _

“Now, let’s get you two patched up, and then we’ll find our lizard.”

_ Our _.

_ (Why did the Universe bend for them? _

_ The monsters call it ‘entertainment.’ _

_ We will call it love.) _

——————

“You had to,” Angelo says.

“I’m not talking about ‘had to!’ I didn’t want to!” Talfryn cries.

Neither Damien nor Angelo understand.

Not yet.

_ (“That is the essence of faith, is it not? To...believe. No matter what obstacles present themselves.” _

_ He is falling falling falling wake up wake up wake— _

_ “What of the evidence of your eyes or your heart?” _

_ “My heart?” _

_ Don’t forget don’t forget you have to listen remember r e m e m b e r remember what it was like to listen Damien Damien wake up have faith listen the sea is calling calling and you are falling—) _

——————

“I’ve had… nightmares.”

——————

Angelo smiles at Talfryn.

_ (“This one’s scared he’s lost his brother.”) _

This time, he is being kind.

“I am thrilled to see what you will become.”

Here is the thing about caves and mountains: they provide shelter. Once upon a time, caves were the first homes, a mountain’s base is always fertile. 

——————

Damien leaves Angelo and looks at the tapestries, drawn to them like a ship to a siren. He is curious. He is shaking. The very base of his world has turned around. Tranquility does not come, neither do the answers. This sadness_ (this guilt) _ settles over his shoulders, crushes him until even his faith is being shattered.

The Fort is oddly… familiar. He has never been here before, of this he is certain, yet he cannot help but feels as though he has seen this place in dreams before. This would have been a proper courtroom, once, and this a common area. He thinks he can feel the ghosts of life in this sacred place, for even with the slug’s slime and corpse on its floor, his hair stands at attention. There is a sort of broken peace, here, the kind you find in conquered places that have long since forgotten what they were.

He cannot hear the sea.

Lord Arum is dead. 

Shouldn’t he feel glad? Shouldn’t he rejoice? Rilla’s kidnapper, dead at last. But instead… instead he is unsure and lost. His mind is full of images of Arum, falling, falling, falling down the Terminus, forever and yet never. To die, thrown over the edge, cast between the stars, is that Arum’s faith? Was he afraid? Was he terrified? How could he not be? He can see it in his mind’s eye, again and again and again, every time chipping at his heart like a hammer chipping at the ground below. Tears fall _ (and fall) _ and he can’t hear, can’t see beyond the walls in front of him.

His feet guide him instead. His heart is beating, rushed, pained. He traps himself between a conscious moment and the next. Damien follows the strange knowledge that he has and walks through the halls. His mind is stuck to each tapestry and—

_ they shine they are beautiful and new and glorious _

—he can see more of them for brief moments before he looks again and they are gone. His mind is playing tricks on him. Wasn’t this Fort once full of light? Weren’t the waves clear and lovely? Wasn’t there noise and couldn’t he hear laughter? Wasn’t this place beautiful?

His heart keeps beating. It’s breaking. He’s crying without knowing all the reasons why, overcome with a grief not entirely his own. His hands trace every wall, every tapestry they can reach. Loneliness overwhelms his senses, choking him in a way he hasn’t since he was but a child. He cannot hear the waves, but he thinks he can hear the ghosts.

He walks. Each tapestry confuses him more and more. Monsters. Humans. Creatures that look like both. Hadn’t he thought the nymphs were mere women? Hadn’t his ears tricked him into believing the Shrieking Weed was Rilla? Hadn’t his heart been tricked into forgiving—

_ (He readies his knife, opens the door and sees—) _

_ Arum. _

_ (The Damien in the halls had forgotten who he was and where he stood. When he opens the door, Arum looks at him but cannot see, needs a moment to make sense of the figure with shining wings and a thousand, too-big teeth, made of feathers and darkness and the emptiness between stars _—

_ “You?” _

_ The blurred edges make sense again. Damien is only a man. _

_ Arum understands. _

_ “Of course it would be you.”) _

——————

Caroline doesn’t like the herbalist’s obsession with this lizard. She definitely does not like how feisty Rilla is. Still, today she has allowed herself to learn.

_ (“This one fears she’ll be found out.”) _

So she listens to Quanyii.

And cedes again.

Compromise is, indeed, a perfect way to leave everyone unhappy.

Life isn’t fair. Not unless fairness is fought for. And Caroline has fought all of her life for the little justice she could get, for whatever was needed to make the playing field fair. She was never offered compromise. She will take it this time, however, because sometimes, only sometimes, fighting every moment gets tiring. Fighting every second, scrambling for a grip, those are not ways to live.

Caroline has fought for fairness all of her life. How _ not _ to fight? She is learning.

_ (But she wants to. That matters.) _

_ (“They’re all afraid already.”) _

_ —————— _

_ “You,” _ the words are beginning to spill from his lips now, unfiltered and uncontrolled. “I can’t believe it’s really…”

_ (“The first one is so easy.”) _

Lord Arum stares back at him. He is alive. He is here.

“I thought you were dead,” his feet don’t know whether to come closer or move away and so he is stuck. “He told me. The… monster. I thought you were—”

His eyes unfocus and zoom in on Arum all at once. He can’t. The blood he’s seen a thousand times over. The grief he’s felt. Is he real? Is he here? Lord Arum should be dead and the tapestries shone and how can he trust his eyes at all? Arum isn’t looking at him, but he has the disdained curve to his expression that Damien saw that night in the Queen’s tower, an eternity ago. His heart is crying and singing and how is he supposed to trust _ himself _?

“And I

_ lived_

it

Oh, I lived it 

_ a thousand times _

in a second’s space! And how can this moment of truth be but a droplet in that endless, churning 

_ sea _

I’ve

_ drowned _

in?”

_ (“He's so afraid already.”) _

_ (Remember? A thousand voices crying in grief, so loud and all-encompassing that the cacophony sounded like music. Anguish so strong it forced the waters to listen, the ground to open, the sun to bow for the thunderstorm. Blood enough to fill the sea twice over, dripping from a single mouth. It hurt, then, like it does now.) _

“If you plan to kill me, you’ll get no sympathy,” Arum says, finally, finally looking at him with those beautiful violet eyes. In them, Damien thinks he can see conflict. “I’m sorry if that hurts your… _ feelings _.”

Damien steps back, struck, “Kill… you? But… I…”

_ (“You had to.” _

_ “I’m not talking about ‘had to!’”) _

Arum does not let him finish. His gaze is even. His posture… resigned. He looks almost... sad? The kind of sadness felt by a person who does not want to feel. Still, Damien can feel Arum’s sadness, the way one might taste water they swim through, even when the lizard lord has gone great lengths to stop himself and everyone else from realizing. 

“Your knife is drawn, honeysuckle,” and oh, how hearing that name from that mouth stings, paired with the bitterness of Arum’s gentle pain. “I’m a monster, not an idiot.”

The door opens.

“Damien, stop!”

_ Rilla _.

She’s covered in dirt. She looks tired. Her hair is a mess, her clothes are rumpled and she is standing oddly. The sight of her floods Damien with a joy he hasn’t felt in weeks. She’s beautiful and alive and safe. 

“My Rilla, it’s you! You’re really here, you’re—”

_ Here _. In Fort Terminus. In the monster den. The very reason why he left the Citadel in the first place. The sight of her is a miracle because he hasn’t seen her in weeks, because Arum…

“You’re the reason I must 

_ kill _

this lizard, of course.”

_ (Nimue killed for that which she loved.) _

_ (“I didn’t want to!”) _

Oh, Saint Damien has abandoned him. 

Tranquility does not come. In its place there is only a rushing, powerful wave of fear. Those violet eyes are but a trap, a light he is drawn to. The tide is in love with the moon, he has lost all control. Damien can feel himself slipping, fading, failing.

_ (“Failure, too, is an ending.”) _

“Hello, Amaryllis. I take it you know this knight who threatens my life?”

“I do.”

He is Rilla’s fiancé. He is her family. She is his. His forever love, his light. It was foolish of him to believe— How could he ever doubt? How could he question his own devotion, when she is...

“And this… _ devil _ is your kidnapper. I will slay him.

_ (I didn’t want—) _

Were you truly Rilla you would know that!”

Is she here? Is she real? Where is he? Where is the tide? Where is his peace? He is _ falling falling falling Saint oh Saint please— _

“An illusion.

_ (How it felt to be held to be safe to be tranquil the softness of her hair in his fingers the way his heart soared when she said yes those eyes were full of joy and love oh the peace that enveloped him the elation—) _

Of course. You must be. But… Then, is that possible? I would know you

_ anywhere _,

_ (—even now even here after all this time but where am I where am I who am I—?) _

but I must slay him, it is my duty,

_ (—had to—) _

to my Citadel and to my 

**love,**

that is the way of the world, I must—!”

_ (Who do you serve?) _

_ (—a good knight is bound to her duty—) _

_ (—the path to my redemption—) _

“Oh, hurry along, will you?” Comes the venom. “I can’t stand another second of this performance.”

“Arum, stop egging him on!”

Arum.

_ Arum. _

** _Arum._ **

“You know the creature’s name,” he says, with dawning horror. His mouth feels like lead, but the words flow like water. The poison is spreading. 

“I do. Damien...”

“You say it like a friend,” there is something calling to him, spreading panic when he recognizes, in Rilla’s voice, her eyes, he thinks he can see—

“Damien,” the woman says, stepping closer. He steps back, closer to the monster. “Please.”

No. Not friend. The thing in her eyes… it’s not...

“Perhaps the long-sought music of your voice deceives me, but is that… Do I not hear…?”

Love.

Oh, how his heart is breaking. His skin is tearing and his mind is crying, screaming. In this world… In this world, what sense can be made? He is—

_ wake up wake up child wake up listen to the tide _

—trying to make sense of this new world he has stumbled it, one that refuses to be still. He is in a thousand burning hells at once. He can feel them pulling at his armor, his fingers, his neck. This… who is this? Is she here? Is he here? This place 

_ (is sacred) _

is a ghost of what it once was, and he doesn’t know how that knowledge came to him. 

“What have I done? What have I done?”

_ (—sea salt dripping from his jaws as his fingernails were stained with blood and those rats ran—) _

_ (—I didn’t want to we destroyed you I’m so sorry—) _

“Damien,” comes the voice again. “I’m safe. It’s okay. You have nothing to worry about!”

A TRAP.

“Ha!” This is neither joy nor mirth, what he feels now isn’t triumph. “Nothing to worry about?”

The trick is falling to pieces. His fingers tighten around the knife. What a foolish he has been.

He is—

_ empty _

—at peace. He breathes, every bone of his shaking. But he can’t get it let to him. No. The Tranquil knight observes the world, allows it to pass through him and then finds… the solution. At last. 

“Amaryllis, this is not helping!”

_ The monster. _

Damien drives his knife to the lizard’s throat. He recoils, gasps in a mockery of fear. Damien’s eyes narrow. The lizard looks at him, but finally, Damien is free of the mirages in his eyes.

_ (Arum is trapped by the tide.) _

This is his duty. 

“Damien, stop!” The woman begs. Her voice is desperate. He is unflinching. 

“I’ve drawn no blood,” his voice is cold. “I am tranquil at last, _ Rilla _. I am thinking clearly.”

_ (“Fear is an incredibly powerful force.”) _

This is the Saints’ guidance.

_ (“I can't be certain I've done anything to him at all.”) _

Rilla looks back at him. In her eyes, Damien recognizes fear. He nods. Yes. Yes, this is how it’s meant to be. He is tranquil. He is sure. There is no such thing as mercy. There are only challenges. The heart cannot be trusted, and neither can his eyes. Everything must be overcome. The only thing that matters is his faith. Follow those wiser. Do not question, for it is impure. He never should have left the lizard monster go. He was blind, but now… now he can finally see things as they are. All of this… everything was just…

“Illusion.”

He quiets his doubts by force. This monster has no name, and these apparitions have no soul. No hound, no nymph, no slug deserves life at all. It’s their mission, as Knights of the Crown, to cleanse the monsters’ blight upon this world. He had forgotten, but now he

_ remembers _.

The world was one way. All of this change, this torment, it all comes from…

“Those violet eyes,” his voice trembles, all beauty in it lost. “Their magic corrupts all.”

A ship without compass. His course. Divine purpose. Duty. Faith. He serves the Citadel and the people of the Citadel and how could he ever forget? That night, under the toll of Saint Damien’s bells, he should have listened to the warning. Letting the lizard go was nothing but magic-induced blasphemy. A mistake. Heresy. And he can’t do it again, he can’t, this is the path to his redemption, laid out in front of him and he must do this—

_ (This venom is so sweet.) _

His heart cannot be trusted. His eyes have been twisted.

_ (Your weight unbalances; so from the scale, you must be tossed entire.) _

_ “You’ve made me see things,” _ Damien spits out with a knife to the lizard’s throat and he’s bleeding, he’s bleeding light and his voice zooms _ who is he who is he who am I— _

The tapestries, they shone. He swears he had touched them, but when he’d opened his eyes again they weren’t there. It must be Arum, it must be. Otherwise...

“Things like what, Damien?” Rilla (_ not Rilla? Rilla?) _ asks him, approaching him slowly. 

_ The tapestries the tapestries the tapestries all the lies that he has seen but were they lies or were they truth monsters and humans I remember I remember do you can you wake up Damien wake up be calm— _

_ (“Once upon a time, there was a man whose all-consuming love began a war and betrayed a nation...”) _

_ “_Lies of humans and monsters living

_ (—a child laughing as he jumped into the sea—) _

together,

lying

_ (—Rilla is not his first love—) _

together! Deceptions all! And so is she!”

Yes. Yes. That must be the truth. It must be. Why else would she be here? Why would she speak to the lizard with affection? No. She must be a trick. It happened before, under the moonlight. She isn’t real.

He avoids looking at her eyes.

_ (She can’t look away.) _

When she asks him to think, he does not listen. He is fixated on the monster’s neck against his blade.

_ (“I will rip your throat out with my teeth!”) _

This monster is the cause. His eyes are the reason Damien’s sense lays in pieces. He has destroyed everything Damien has ever defended, and it all began that night at the Queen’s tower. Damien should have killed the lizard, he should have, and know he is paying for his grave mistake. He didn’t want to do it, then, but he has no other choice now, not when the lizard has proven inhuman. He was wrong. He was wrong, there’s nothing human in his eyes_ — _

_ Except— _

“You must die.”

_ (“If I kill him—”) _

The illusion tries to get near him. He does not allow it. But he cannot hurt her, either.

_ (“I’m just trying to keep you from killing yourself in the process.”) _

“I trust in the revealing power of truth to place all things in their proper order.”

“Oh, spare me.”

_ No _.

Not again.

This is his path.

_ (What would the sea be, without the moon?) _

_ I know what I must do. _

“I will fulfill my 

**duty** _ , _

and cut this lizard’s throat.”

_ (WAKE UP.) _

_ (Self sacrifice is a knightly virtue.) _

_ (“Which was it?”) _

——————

“Lizard,” Caroline bites out. “You lay a finger on her—-

_ (the sun would always miss the moon) _

—I’ll behead you twice before I’m

_ satisfied _.”

_ (Arum is afraid. He regrets. He loves. _

_ He does not regret loving.) _

_ (“And suddenly… he’s gone.”) _

——————

“What’s weird is how old all that stuff is,” Talfryn says. Something tightens in Caroline’s gut. “There’s a layer on top that’s pretty new, like within the last couple months maybe, but underneath that it’s just, boom!”

_ (“I don’t want to die—”) _

“Suddenly all the tracks and everything are ancient—”

_ (—once upon a time, three thousand years ago, in a village by the sea—) _

“Some of it is nearly fossilized! Like nobody used this place for millennia before recently.”

_ (—your weight unbalances—) _

“And there isn’t even anything growing, no moss or…”

_ (—and the world was clean once more—) _

“That’s enough,” she grimaces, focuses on the noise through the door. Signs of life.

——————

Minds may shatter at a glimpse of the unknowable but… that is nothing compared to the damage it can inflict just before the shattering point.

Trauma. Betrayal. Manipulation.

——————

_ What do we have to our advantage? _

The best Knights of the Crown. A witch. A knight who does not want to be a knight. A witch that is not a witch.

_ (Magic. Love. The Universe.) _

_ (Gods.) _

——————

Caroline prepares her forces and goes to face an army.

Angelo follows.

_ (“It must be true that monsters stand guard in our Citadel’s shadows.”) _

They find nothing.

_ (“I don’t want to die—”) _

Their hearts break under the weighted silence of an empty, tragic place. This was once a home_ (their home)_ and now it’s bones and filth. The very place that was meant to bring peace now holds what is meant to kill them. 

Caroline remembers the fish by the sea—

_ (A fisherman and his spear brought home a great catch and the child leaped with joy to skin it—) _

——————

Here’s what the monster failed to understand: 

Fear is a funny thing.

Angelo saw the avalanche and decided not to be crushed. Caroline learned to survive.

Lord Arum looks at Sir Marc.

“We are not going to die here.”

——————

Caroline lets the herbalist do as she pleases.

If she dies, it’s not Caroline’s fault.

There’s no time to reassess, no time to reconsider. The world keeps moving. Caroline has to move with it. She has to catch up. She has to get ahead and fulfill her duty, protect her people, be brave—

There’s no time to answer every question. There never has been. 

She earned this. She will earn this victory.

The herbalist

_ manipulated _

her. Just like her precious lizard monster manipulated her fiancé. 

“They aren’t people! They are monsters!”

_ (When did you forget?) _

—————-

“Give us time… give us time…”

There’s ghosts in Fort Terminus.

“Fort Terminus is our home.. the bridge is finally making progress!”

Even death clings to love.

“I don’t want to die! Everything’s shaking and I’m—

_ scared.” _

The bridge….

“I love you, Pix.”

_ I’m sorry. _

_ “_Everything’s going to be al—”

Fort Terminus remembers.

——————

Arum laughs.

“You can’t do it, can you, honeysuckle?”

_ (“It should have been enough.”) _

Damien grits his teeth. But when Arum screams, he is in pain, too.

_ I didn’t, oh saints, I didn’t— _

——————

Caroline finds Angelo by her side.

_ (Always, always by her side.) _

She collects herself and runs.

She has a mission. Nothing will stop her from fulfilling it. Failure is not an ending, not for her, she will not allow it.

_ (A small part of her is worried for Quanyii. The other part, the one that fell in love with the witch in the first place, knows she is more than capable of handling herself. Quanyii is fine. She is. She has to be. She must have Talfryn, too, for as much as she pretends otherwise, Quanyii is quick to become fond of people like him.) _

_ (A smaller part, one she quietens immediately, is worried for Rilla.) _

————————

“Damien,” the illusion_ (illusion? wake up) _ calls out to him. Her eyes are full of desperation, tears of frustration gathering at the corners. “Help me.”

Something… happened?

“Rilla, my love, I don’t understand,” he pleads. 

Rilla.... she is helping the monster. It’s not like she ever had strong opinions about the war. But. But…. why? Her voice is so tender and her eyes full of worry and _ why isn’t the world right again? _

“And I get that, Damien, I really do.”

Does she? How can she? She’s giving him no answers and, saints, the things she’s doing…

“I don’t know what I’d do in your shoes right now,” his love says, but she’s not looking at him, not really. “Because I know you probably need time to think to figure all of this out.”

_ Figure it out? _ What? Why would he need to do that? Why can’t she answer him? Why can’t she explain—

“Please…”

She needs him.

“Help me.”

_ (The sea can’t ignore the moon’s call, cannot ignore it’s gravity.) _

His mind is screaming at him, a thousand whining voices he can make no sense of. There’s a pressure all over his head that threatens to drown him. He is in _ pain _ , can feel it deep in his bones and pulsing in his ribcage. His heart _ (his heart) _ is crying, breaking into a thousand bleeding pieces and _ where else do you feel mercy I don’t I don’t I can’t— _

Better in a crisis. _ Better in a crisis. _He needs to be….

“Saint Damien above, lend us your tranquility.”

Tranquil, tranquil, tranquil...

He closes his eyes. Breathes in. 

“Okay, Damien. I understand.”

_ (You don’t.) _

“O Saint, if it be the _ Will of Tranquility _

_ (shooting the arrow, disarming Arum, slaying the Damsel, calming the waves in the lost village’s lake) _

then lend 

_ your hand _

_ (“—invite your long dead fingers in—“) _

in this lost hour...I lean on you for 

_ guidance _, 

_ (—a voice called out when a child drowned and it was his voice his own voice the river’s voice a ghost—) _

for succour, in a realm ever-lost in a desert maze of 

_ darkness… _”

The wind chimes.

The temple. Damien feels the ghost of fingers brushing his mind. He sees the river at the West. He can see the long, polished wind chimes at the temple’s entrance. He can see the ocean—

Light.

_ Peace _.

He does not give himself time to think. He cannot allow himself to question. This is what faith means. This is what love is. He has to believe. He has to. Don’t think. Do not be afraid. Reach out. Reach out _ now _.

Power fills him and he gasps. It fits around his hands and his mouth like the moon in the sky. It does not flow so much as drip. Every droplet fills the cup. Every tear is light.

“O Saint Damien, we beg that you

lend—

_ (you cannot borrow something that was yours all along) _

—us your spear to pierce

the _ veil _

_ (there are ghosts in Fort Terminus and they l i s t e n) _

that keeps this beast from

_ home _.”

_ (The Keep fell silent and now it falls still. It remembers. It accepts the old, reborn power and wills. It feels. It opens a portal with the help of the miracle.) _

“If it be your will, if it be your will, as it is

_ mine.” _

The portal opens.

_ (You would need a god.) _

“Impossible,” Lord Arum whispers.

_ (Sometimes, Damien almost remembers.) _

The sound of his voice blinds Damien. Rilla’s relief throws him towards darkness. 

_ (“I only opened up the gates around him—”) _

_ Something happened. _ Something happened and Rilla _ figured it out _. She— She isn’t telling him anything and this is dismissal and, saints, what he did, what he just did— This is heresy, this is treason. She calls it emotions but he can hear it, he would know her and her voice anywhere and she is lying to him!

She isn’t speaking to him and Lord Arum is here and he prayed and the portal opened and he wanted to help he wanted to _ saints I wanted to help Lord Arum I didn’t want him to die and Rilla she is here and yet she is so far away and nothing makes any sense— _

_ (“—and pushed.”) _

“I can’t help how I feel, Damien!”

He is angry.

“Nor can I.”

He is afraid.

“Farewell.”

So he goes.

_ (Betrayal.) _

_ (“Separated for slaughter.”) _

———————

Sir Caroline and Angelo are running. He does not know exactly from what. One hallway blurs into the next. His head is full to the brim with voices he used to know. His heart is overcome with sadness.

Once upon a time…

_ (“I should scare them!”) _

But he follows Sit Caroline, like he promised he would do.

_ (Like he failed to do, once.) _

_ (Twice. Remember remember remember—) _

She is angry. Her anger seeps into the air and burns his skin. He tries to lighten the mood, once he swore he would not be crushed but now it feels like he is slowly being asphyxiated.

_ (“That leaves just two more to lead astray.”) _

“Do any of you know what an order is?”

Her anger directed at him is a blade. Her eyes aren’t entirely there. She is looking at him, she isn’t. She is burning yet he feels cold. This shouldn’t be happening. She should not be angry at him. They are—

family

—friends. He follows her as his Investigator General, but above all he follows her as his friend. He loves her. He wishes her happiness. He wants to protect her when he can, the way he wishes to nurture Damien. But she does not seem to need it.

Worse, she does not seem to want it.

_ (Twist the mind and twist the steel. The fear Angelo fears is not all Queen Mira’s doing.) _

Sir Caroline still saves his life when the support beam falls.

But she does not listen. Not about the steel, not about her leadership, not about Rilla.

Rilla, who is not a traitor. She can’t be. 

_ (This is what love entails: trust.) _

——————

He finds… a garden.

_ (This place used to be so alive—) _

His heart cannot break anymore than it already has. His pieces can’t be torn any further. Otherwise, he would be crushed under the weight of a thousand lives destroyed. If he remembered, the way his mind screams at him too, he would crumble.

The trees… they are dead_ (were green)_ and hollow _(flush with leaves)._ Water flows. Of course, he is drawn to it. His sadness does not grow or deepen

_ —a child jumps in a river and his brother laughs and laughs and laughs— _

but it beats, pumps through his blood and into his organs, his limbs. It drowns him. He does not fight it.

“Drink the devil’s water, eh?”

_ (Children ran amok here do you remember, remember remember when laughter and touch and you were so warm d o y o u r e m e m b e r—?) _

“Cursed water or not, it matters to me no longer.”

And he can’t see anything because the garden is dead, is bleeding, has bled, murdered by greed and hate and the water

_ —is clear— _

so he leans down and drinks...

“Mud!”

His eyes. He can’t trust his eyes. He can’t trust his ears. His heart has betrayed him. He can see—

_ a thousand children hiding among trees do you know what color the ski is it’s the same as the sea how curious that is _

_ — _soil in even tracks. Grey. No life. No sound but the muddy water. No hope.

He is disgusted to his very core.

Nothing can grow here. Nothing can thrive. This marks the place.

He smiles.

“My fall.”

No beast. No man. No saint above.

“I have given you everything, saint,

_ (your hands bled they bled through your gloves as your skin split open) _

and this

_ (flashes of smiles, a garden full of trees, violet eyes) _

is

_ (death death _ ** _death_ ** _ the stench of flesh clinging to his nails and the sea in his mouth) _

my _ reward _!”

_ How did you kill this how did you do this how could you do this you monsters— _

_ (—you might lose yourself—) _

_ —————— _

Be calm, child. You still remember. Beauty and blight, meshed so tightly one becomes the other.

You remember the water.

——————

Angelo betrays her.

Well. Alright then.

He can die.

——————

Damien falls.

When he doesn’t drown, he believes.

_ (He hears his own, old, long-dead voice echoing in his head, cast in the remnants of his renewed power, and he believes. He does not understand, not really, not yet, but, inside, he knows who he is. Like before, his heart will guide him, and he will follow those he loves. _

_ Tranquility. It will not fail him. _

_ He stops thrashing. This river cannot consume him.The waves rock high above him. He has never been still. A river only feeds the sea.) _

——————

“I don’t think we have a minute!”

_ (“Give us time, give us time…”) _

_ (“And then the fourth rejoined them.”) _

He will defend them. He will give them every last second he can offer, until his very last breath. That is his duty, that’s what his love entails.

Arrows fall and fall, tearing blood and flesh from the pigs. In the balcony, his people recoil, blinded by the red raining down as it sinks into their clothes. The attack drives the pigs away, distracted as they are by each other, and puts more space between the beasts and the tiny specks in the balcony.

“What? Who’s there?” One of them calls out, angry and_ — _

_ scared. _

_ (But not for the right reasons. The pigs are young, so young still, will remain young forever. They don’t know their stories. They don’t know their elders. They do not know to be afraid of this shining knight and his thousand teeth and his arrows like falling stars they don’t know to be afraid of the way he blurs—) _

“Why, no one who should surprise you, porcine prince,” Damien _ (always, always Damien, something has to stay the same—) _ grins, _ wide and with a thousand teeth. _ He is _ great and tall and a light, enveloped in soft bones and flesh. _ “My coming was

** _foretold_ **

from your first glutton's breath, from the first bones you broke, from the first flesh you slathered on.”

He is not lying. The storms sing behind him, loud and proud. The crackling of them is joyful. He is as the sea, turmoil and calm all at once, miles and miles of depth. He is tranquil, his voice thundering and steady, a lighthouse in a tempest, the tempest itself. The Knight of the Crown is mighty, rebuilt himself to be greater than anything he had ever been before. 

_ (Bring the seashell closer, hear the waves, his heart is beating with the tide. The sea’s child is finally listening.) _

“I am a force as inevitable as 

_ the waves' _

own 

** _crashing_ ** _ , _

as endless and 

** _eternal_ **

as these Terminal falls. You, beasts, are Want incarnate. You feed, squeal, and scrabble for every living moment but control not a second of your own actions. Your 

_ hungers _

guide you, and not you your hungers. And today_ — _

** _I_ **

—they devour you

_ whole _.”

The arrows keep falling. He is not hesitant, this time around. They leave his grasp with a certainty he has not felt in weeks, the same perfect aim that felled the Damsel. He does not mourn the wounds, does not hear anything but the waves in his head, around him, the storm he has brought with his voice as it gets louder, louder, thunders and echoes for everyone, everyone to hear it all at last_ — _

_ I am these Terminal falls, these waves and this storm and I will _

_ d r o w n _

** _you_ ** _ . _

_ (I have done it before. I will do it again, as many times as I have to.) _

_ This is what I am, beasts of desire. This is what I always have been, what I will always be, _ ** _I know what I am:_ **

“I

_ (of the Second Citadel, of the First one, of this world and the next thousand others, terrible wings, ask, ask him, do you remember?) _

am

_ (no hesitation, a man who is not a man a gathering of stars, proud of it aren’t you?) _

your

_ (waves will not drown me I r e f u s e to be fallen) _

end.”

Duty. Love. Faith. Each of this he wears like a cloak. He had forgotten many things, but now he can remember the most important one. This is the way he needs to live. The light rolls off him in waves, All of the voices in his head are finally one. He knows what he must do. 

_ “_I listen to my

** _heart_ **,

I let it guide, not steer. And this is why I am

** _tranquility_ **

itself.”

_ This is not my fall. _

_ (“My love,” Damien reaches out for Rilla with all of his heart, a warm blizzard of starlight. _

_ He smiles at her, a mouth full of sweetness and a glimpse of too many rows of teeth. He apologizes to her and Rilla grins wide, happy, sees his hands become claws between blinks. She can hear the waves. _

_ He is beautiful. _

_ “I have returned now.”) _

_ (“Even a monster could make me grow.”) _

_ (No part of her mind is screaming.) _

——————

“They speak of fire, too.”

The monster is not prepared. Caroline is burning, a sun in human skin. Damien is shining the way the sea shines under the moon. Angelo is standing with a strength only faith in love can achieve.

The monster is young. The Queen is, too. They only know to be afraid.

——————

Damien asks the pigs _ why not slay simultaneously _and they listen.

He does not even have to try, this time. 

He doesn’t even get to recite poetry.

_ (Sir Damien introduces himself to Quanyii. He calls her fair maiden of the wild. She likes him just for that, but she has been watching him since the first arrow fell. _

_ She smiles. She was right, all along. _

_ Oh, how glad she is that Caroline is not alone.) _

——————

These monsters….. are dying. They are in pain.

_ (—you crushed them with your gaping maws you tasted their blood—) _

Sir Caroline’s cruelty reminds him of—

_ (This must be done the bridge the senate remember what they said Helicoid we have to help what must we do we can’t let them destroy all—) _

He can’t remember.

He will not fight her.

“Do you really want to do this?” He asks, heart in turmoil. He is scared, can feel the crushing weight of the monster’s powers to his very bones. But…when he looks at Caroline’s eyes, empty of life and full of blind rage, he feel like he might die. He isn’t sure this fear is the monster’s fault at all.

_ (“This must be done.”) _

_ (Remember how they screamed and how they ran and how the blood tasted in your mouth the earth opened wide and everyone screamed screamed cried yelled out for mercy—) _

He can’t do this.

“Farewell, Investigator

_ Senator.” _

_ (Angelo does not notice his word mix ups. Why would he notice a problem that does not exist? This is not a mix up. _

_ It’s a memory.) _

——————

Damien points the arrow.

_ (HE IS POINTING AT ME HE SHINES HE WANTS TO KILL ME NO NO NO N O—) _

And the monster screams.

_ ( _ — _ remember how they cried you are a murderer murderer killed your own blood is this what you do in the name of love claws dripping dripping dripping comrades torn to shred blown to bits as they cried cried cried cried give us more time save us you are GUILTY _ — _ ) _

_ (He misses.) _

His arm is nothing, _ nothing _ compared to this it’s in his head in his heart in his eyes but still he has to do something has to attack has to stop it before it can hatch fully he drags himself to his feet and he has to kill it he has to—

** _NO—_ **

“My mind! It’s 

_ inside _

my mind!”

Rilla says _ we have to spread the fire starter powder _ and he _ listens _, focuses on her voice and her love and everything she is, the way her tone calls to him like it always, always does. She helps him bear the brunt and he loves her he could overcome anything for her—

_ (The monster coils away. It cannot bear the fizzling light and the power, the feeling of that sea clinging to its skin. But it knows. I know. I know what you love the most _ ** _I know what I must do._ **

_ Rilla screams.) _

———————

Every syllable of objection is treason. None of them understand how tightly she must hold on to her authority. They don’t.

“I have no choice but to help my comrades when they are in need.”

Idiot! No! He’s throwing it all away and their mission will go to waste _ it will all be for nothing and so what if they are comrades they must defend the whole Citadel failure is not an option it can’t all be for nothing— _

“I am your

_ commanding officer! _

_ (—the thunder cracked, the child stood still, he was brave and only a child, just a child—) _

Your Investigator

Senator!”

_ (It must be done.) _

_ (—I didn’t want to—) _

_ Where do you feel mercy? _

She remembers.

Caroline cedes another step. She is trying to be better. Angelo, Damien, even Rilla… they are all her comrades. They matter. This life of hers matters. She wants to have a home to go back to, with Quanyii. She wants a fire to sit next to, with her… with her friends.

_ (She has had friends before. These people are not like any of them.) _

Angelo doesn’t realize what he said. It almost makes her smile.

_ More fear. _

The fear down her spine guides her.

_ More fear. _

“This terror is… potent.”

MORE FEAR

Caroline and Angelo go through the magic bubble. It’s like their first mission together, and yet miles different. It’s funny, how the Universe throws you hints. Caroline is shaking with fear, but she is unimaginably pleased.

_ (“Why wasn’t it enough?”) _

There is a plan to be made. Or… there should be, but her friends had a plan. They are… extremely capable, indeed. Sir Damien has already done his part, aided by Rilla, Quanyii and Talfryn.

Sir Caroline will be the distraction. Sir Angelo will be the impact.

_ Strength in unity. _

They warn her. She listens. Still, she continues. The monster floods her mind with fear and she is _ terrified— _

What matters isn’t if you are afraid, it’s what you do with that fear.

——————

Plans fall apart.

Quanyii can’t keep Rilla’s ankle steady.

“The balcony!”

_ (Sir Caroline the specks they are here and they are after me why aren’t they dead why can’t I kill them why aren’t they a f r a i d I will kill one but the three the three of them the strongest specks they are shining shining shining they shine I WILL KILL HER—) _   
  
(RUN)

_ (You would need—) _

_ “RILLA———!” _

_ (YOU WOULD NEED) _

_ “Saints… I can’t believe…” _

_ (—if the Universe wills it so—) _

“No, damnit, no!”

_ (A GOD) _

_ (—they s h i n e—) _

_ (gaping maws and shining teeth a thunderbolt across the sky) _

_ (you won’t drown me I will burn you I WILL NOT BE CRUSHED) _

Rilla does not fall. 

They do not let her.

_ (Why does the Universe bend for them? Do you remember?) _

——————-

Damien’s heart screams.

He must go after her. He must. He can’t leave her alone. He can’t lose her, he can’t, not Rilla, not after everything. With every single bone of his body, he must protect her. He will protect her. He will.

“Stop, Sir Damien.”

He is scared. He is terrified.

“I’m going down after her,” Sir Caroline says. Her eyes are not looking at him, she’s scanning the terrain for the details of her plan. The curve of her shoulders is determined. Her hand on his shoulder is steady.

This is his leader. 

He listens.

_ (When did the sea ever love the sun?) _

“Abandon you? Never!” 

Sir Caroline still does as she wishes to. Somehow… somehow that soothes the storms. Leaving her is not… it does not sit right with him, but when she jumps, he does as she asked.

_ (Damien remembers.) _

——————

Caroline jumps after Rilla. She is scared.

She trusts. In Quanyii. In her comrades. In Rilla’s… magic.

_ (Be brave.) _

Rilla saves them.

——————

Angelo follows through with Sir Caroline’s plan. He does not protest. He trusts her implicitly. He knew Sir Caroline would save Rilla, and he knows she will do it again.

His shoulders ache from bringing down the Fort’s walls. He is dirty. He may be bleeding. He is tired. He is hungry.

When he crosses over the portal, carrying Damien and Talfryn with him, he is grinning.

——————

The balcony is cracking. The monster is screaming.

“You are NOTHING—”

Caroline attacks the monster. Again and again and again. It calls her a speck and Caroline grins, with all of her teeth and all of the shining fire, wings and solar flares and all.

A lesson from the Southern Frosts: the more you insist that you aren’t scared, the more scared you sound. She learned this young. The monster will not get a chance.

The portal opens.

_ (—you must be tossed—) _

“Farewell, fearful creature,” her smile is dripping blood and the air around her crackles as the monster falls down, down, down, as it screams—

_ (Stare the beast down, spear in hand, and it will surely listen.) _

They jump.

——————

Rilla’s laughter is warm. After everything, it is contagious. Caroline…. Caroline allows herself this.

“Thank you, Sir Caroline.”

Rilla thinks jumping was impossible. But it wasn’t. Facing the…. raw terror monster was not difficult at all.

It was _ easy _.

It was terrifying, too. 

Important wisdom Caroline learned, all on her own, to survive, to fight, to live life to her fullest.

Fear does not always… cause inaction.

Freeze.

_ (Rilla could not stop Damien from leaving.) _

Flight.

_ (Pix and David wanted to leave.) _

Fight.

_ (Caroline jumped. Marc stayed. Talfryn tried.) _

——————

Damien, Caroline and Angelo reunite. Many things happen.

One, Sir Caroline protects a monster, trusting the love of one she once called a traitor.

Two, Sir Damien looks at Arum and Rilla and makes a decision, neither of them know yet.

Three, Sir Angelo holds all of them, relieved, happy. He reassures himself and all of them that they are alive and all will be well.

“I am… very glad to call you my comrades.”

Comrades. Friends. Family.

This is their starting point.

_ (Arum does not protest when Angelo adds him to the hug. The cogs are turning inside his head. _

_ The three knights…. alone they shine. Together…. together they are blinding.) _

Caroline breathes in. She goes…. home.

———————

Damien watches Marc and Talfryn go with dread overpowering his happiness. The stirrings of his heart…. he is being, as Caroline said, a selfish idiot. But… he knows what he must do, for Rilla, for Arum, for himself.

Rilla is right. It is not as simple as two in unity. Still, he cannot step into this as seamlessly as she would wish. His heart keeps bleeding, his love pulsing sad and grieving.

He cannot tie her down. He cannot do this to her. His own insecurities cannot ruin her happiness. He will not allow his love to turn bitter and suffocate the most beautiful flowers he has ever known.

“Farewell.”

_ (I want her to be free.) _

_ (Is it easier? To mourn a man who was a monster all along?) _

“Damien,” Rilla’s heart breaks, is breaking, has broken. She’s not one for crying, but she can feel the tears prickling at her eyes as her love bleeds out.

_ (It isn’t.) _

Then Arum duels him. The fight. Of course they do.

“You have a _ choice_, Honeysuckle.”

(_Run._

_ Be brave. _

_ Choose.) _

_ (What matters is what you do with your fear.) _

And Damien… Damien looks at Arum, unarmed and brilliant and so open, so sincere

_ —it’s okay it’s okay if you are afraid it’s okay to be afraid it’s okay to d o u b t— _

he feels like sinking into those arms and letting the waves carry them unto the next plane over, right off into the edge of the world to fall and become shooting stars. He craves, desires so much to know that warmth and experience that love, be enveloped by it until he forgets what it feels like to not be clean. 

“I do. I do want to try.”

_ (The question was whether or not the sea ever loved the sun. There is no questioning, child, whether the sea loves the moon.) _

Rilla apologizes. Arum gives him a chance.

“Do we?” One of the loves of his life asks.

The answer, fought for as it has been, comes easy.

“I do.”

“I do.”

“And I do.”

_ (This has always been free will.) _

_ (Nimue killed and Vivian died, but, before that? _

_ They lived.) _

——————

The Queen grants her a promotion of all of things. That annoying—

Caroline doesn’t think about it for long, because Quanyii’s lips are on hers and she is home. She is happy. The fire is soothed and there’s only fireworks, beautiful as they are.

_ (Fireworks, from what she’s lived through, are best experienced with company.) _

——————

Sir Caroline will allow herself one bit of softness.

She celebrates the Coming of the Year with those she loves. 

“May we love one another as family until the Saints rise again.”

——————

Sir Angelo, Sir Damien and Sir Caroline will live for the Citadel. They will fight broken and barely even alive and one day at the end of the world they will tear a monster down by

—_ not drowning by burning by being alive— _

their love and their duty. It will fall and the Citadel will stand. They will go home.

Unity entails trust. There have never been three more in union than the sea, the earth, and the sun.

Angelo, Damien and Caroline will live for their home and their loved ones. They will learn each other again, learn to distinguish now from then. They will love.

_ (“I was afraid,” Caroline will say. I was afraid I was afraid and I still pointed my slingshot at the sky I still ran towards my fear because I will not be killed I will _ ** _not_ ** _ be killed—) _

_ (They will die.) _

——————

.

.

.

The monster is awake, at last.

_“I haven’t gotten to the ending, have I?”_

**Author's Note:**

> :3
> 
> Any questions, direct them at @damienthepious over on tumblr! Thank you for reading!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [An Abridged History](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21299570) by [TypingMonkey (purty64)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/purty64/pseuds/TypingMonkey)


End file.
